[Quote:]

“You ain’t takin’ this through,” she says. “No knives. You can’t bring a knife through here.”

It takes a moment for me to realize that she’s serious. “I’m … but … it’s …”

“Sorry.” She throws it into a bin and starts to walk away.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “That’s airline silverware.”

“Don’t matter what it is. You can’t bring knives through here.”

“Ma’am, that’s an airline knife. It’s the knife they give you on the plane.”

At least the pilot won’t cut any corners in his work in the cockpit…

Feel safer yet?

Speaking in a USA Today article, TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said, “Some of our officers aren’t respected.” It’s not often that I laugh out loud while reading the newspaper, but that one had me going. You don’t say.

In the same article, a screener at Boston’s Logan International said of the new badges and shirts, “It’ll go a long way to enhance the respect of this workforce.”

No, sorry, that’s not it. You don’t bully and fool people into respecting you.

Microsoft has a patch out:

That’s an awful lot of megs, to be sure - just how many words are we talking about here? Microsoft explains:

The words “Friendster,” “Klum,” “Nazr,” “Obama,” and “Racicot” are not recognized when you check the spelling in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008.

Woa. That’s over 11 Mb per word. That’s what I call “bloat”!

(Oh, and you need to reboot after applying this patch - cool!)

[Quote:]

The International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) is refusing to discuss a leaked paper that suggests it has already rejected appeals against the ratification of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an international standard.

Anyone still taking ISO seriously needs to have their head examined… pity.

[Quote:]

Retail employees have received instructions on how to activate iPhones, and are given special instructions to let the customer bond immediately with their iPhone.

[Quote:]

Josef Fritzl, who locked his daughter in a cellar dungeon for 24 years, has asked permission to leave his prison cell after admitting he can no longer stand being cooped up.

[Quote:]

Jayne Jones, of Aberfan near Merthyr Tydfil, used to travel with her son Alex, 14, in the council-provided taxi when she feared he may have a fit.

But Merthyr Tydfil council has told her this must stop until she has undergone a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check.

The council said this was a standard requirement for escorting children.

The article makes it perfectly clear why this rule exists. Emphasis mine:

A spokesperson for Merthyr council said: “We cannot comment on particular cases but can confirm that CRB checking is a requirement of our transport provisions in relation to adults travelling on home-to-school transport in the capacity of an escort.

“This is a standard requirement and has been for several years.

“Any adult acting as an escort will, in the public gaze, be viewed as acting with the full acquiescence of the council and hence with its implied authority.

“For the protection of the council and all vulnerable persons in its care it’s essential all those endowed with an authority, implicit or explicit, should meet the security requirements within the transport contract provisions.”

[Quote:]

It’s not just the American dollar that’s losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn’t worth what it used to be.

The “value of a statistical life” is $6.9 million in today’s dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May _ a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago.

The Associated Press discovered the change after a review of cost-benefit analyses over more than a dozen years.

Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.

When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution.

Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted.

[Quote:]

Texan Phil Gramm handed John McCain a huge headache Thursday by calling America a “nation of whiners” whose economic complaints are mostly “mental.”

“Phil Gramm does not speak for me. I strongly disagree,” Mr. McCain said, trying to tamp down the problem caused by his longtime friend, who holds a doctorate in economics and taught the subject at Texas A&M before moving to Congress.

Really? You made it sound like a talking point for quite a while now:

[On Thursday, McCain stumbles on Viagra:]

John McCain’s Straight Talk Express stalled yesterday when a reporter asked him about insurance companies that cover Viagra but not birth control. The Republican presidential candidate refused to give a straight answer. The exchange, which happened aboard McCain’s famously-named campaign bus, can be seen at MSNBC.com.

[On Friday, he visits....]

Unions plan to protest an appearance by Republican presidential candidate John McCain in Hudson, Wis., early Friday morning.
Union members will gather from 7 to 8 a.m. outside J & L Steel Erectors, where McCain will hold a town hall meeting for women later Friday morning. J & L is located at 2365 Willis Miller Drive in Hudson.

[McCain:]

“Iran’s most recent missile tests demonstrate again the dangers it poses to its neighbors and to the wider region, especially Israel. Ballistic missile testing coupled with Iran’s continued refusal to cease its nuclear activities should unite the international community in efforts to counter Iran’s dangerous ambitions. Iran’s missile tests also demonstrate the need for effective missile defense now and in the future, and this includes missile defense in Europe as is planned with the Czech Republic and Poland. Working with our European and regional allies is the best way to meet the threat posed by Iran, not unilateral concessions that undermine multilateral diplomacy.”

The farthest a Sahab 3 Missile can fly is 1,300 miles. Experts call it “a medium-range missile capable of hitting targets in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey.” And the distance between Tabriz, Iran and Krakow, Poland is 1,538.3 miles. The distance between Tabriz, Iran and Ostrava in the Czech Republic is even greater — 1602.2 miles. So, McCain is promising Americans a defense for Iranian missiles that can’t even reach the defense.

Another problem for McCain is that on July 4, 2008 — less than a week before the Iranian Missile Testing — Poland rejected the idea of allowing a missile shield defense system in its country. Bush has offered many bribes for his missile defense shield to the Polish, but they have said no. Consistently.

Well, at least he didn’t forget Poland…

[Quote:]

We performed this disassembly immediately following the iPhone launch at 12:01 July 11, 2008, New Zealand time. That’s 5:01 AM, July 10, Pacific time for those of us who aren’t islanders.

[Quote:]

There’s very few people that have the balls to take on Stephen Colbert on his own show when he calls them out, but apparently the Cookie Monster is one of those people. In this clip from the show, Cookie Monster explains to Colbert exactly why he’s traded in his cookies for healthier fare these days.

[Quote:]

One of his comments in class seemed so axiomatic that I immediately thought of it as “Ashton’s Law” and have quoted it as such ever since:

Ashton’s Law: Whenever someone tries to do something for you, they usually end up doing it to you.  — Dr. Alan Ashton, 1974

I have long lost track of how many times over the past 34 years I’ve thought of Ashton’s Law or have spoken it out loud to others. Dr. Ashton made the comment in the context of operating systems, software tools, and applications; all we have to do is look at something like the User Account Protection in MS Vista to see that Ashton’s Law is all too much alive and well.

[Quote:]

Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena and refused to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he influenced the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama.

[..]

A decision on whether to pursue contempt charges now goes to the full Judiciary Committee and ultimately to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Not that it matters - the House already has voted to hold Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers in contempt for failing to cooperate with its inquiry into whether the administration fired nine federal prosecutors in 2006 for political reasons, and that’s tied up in federal court and may not be resolved before Bush’s term ends in January. So Rove can freely work on getting McCain elected…

[Quote:]

This may come as a shock, but a prominent anti-homosexual Republican attorney general has apparently been caught having homosexual sex intercourse with his homosexual gay male assistant. Bonus: The dude’s wife caught him, in their bed. This is the rumor that the AG’s office has officially denied, so now of course everybody is spilling the sordid details.

AG in question is Troy King, who, of course, is only interested in outlawing homosexuality and sex toys.

http://view.break.com/534959 - Watch more free videos

[Quote:]

An appeals court in Germany has ruled that the owners of a network are not responsible for the copyright infringement of their users. The decision overturns a previous judgment that held an open WiFi network owner liable for damages, even if the infringer is a stranger making use of the network.

[..]

The district court that heard the case ruled in favor of the plaintiff, saying that since the defendant couldn’t prove which third-parties (if any) were guilty of copyright infringement on his network, he was responsible. Unsurprisingly, the defendant appealed the case, and the Frankfurt court of appeals ruled in his favor. The court said that the “abstract risk of abuse” of the defendant’s connection is not enough to require him by law to lock it down. There was also no concrete evidence of copyright infringement on the defendant’s part, therefore he should not be held liable for damages, the judge said.

Time to remove the encryption from your WiFi access…

“Well, happy birthday to President Bush, he turned 62 on Sunday. 62 years old. … He is now twice his approval rating, that’s amazing.”

–Jay Leno

[Quote:]

The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election.

Suspicions about Sen. Obama’s true motives have been building over the past few weeks, but not until today have the bloggers called him out for betraying the Democratic Party’s losing tradition.

“Barack Obama seems to be making a very calculated attempt to win over 270 electoral votes,” wrote liberal blogger Carol Foyler at LibDemWatch.com, a blog read by a half-dozen other liberal bloggers. “He must be stopped.”

But those comments were not nearly as strident as those of Tracy Klugian, whose blog LoseOn.org has backed unsuccessful Democratic candidates since 2000.

“Increasingly, Barack Obama’s message is becoming more accessible, appealing, and yes, potentially successful,” he wrote. “Any Democrat who voted for Dukakis, Mondale or Kerry should regard this as a betrayal.”